Jody Holland Blog

A successful leader is one that can build a solid foundation with the bricks that people have thrown at them. In this life, there will always be trouble. There will always be one person or another that is throwing bricks at the leaders who are moving forward. It isn't that any of us really want to have to dodge a brick, nor do we want to take any of the direct hits. It is somewhat foolish to think that you will never have to deal with problems though. Problems are simply a fact of life, and as such, we need to address them head on.

One of the toughest things that we do is take one of those bricks to the face. When we find ourselves in a situation where we didn't actually do wrong but we are being accused of something, it hurts our ego. If you have been a leader for very long, you have likely already found yourself in one of those situations where arguing with the person about your innocence is somewhat pointless. At times, we simply have to apologize for the situation, accept the blame for something that we didn't do, and move forward. If a person is operating as a bundle of emotions, they may attack us. When they are operating as such, it won't really matter what we say, they have already made up their mind about our guilt. When I have found myself in those situations, I simply apologize that the situation exists, assure them that there was non ill intent, and focus on moving forward.

Some people in this life, particularly in business, simply want to be mad. As a consultant, I have found that I am the scapegoat for people's negative emotions at times. I come back to a statement that has helped me stay balanced. Nothing is real except for the things that I make real. I have to create the label before it is real. I have to give it meaning before it has any meaning. This means that I can choose to humble myself, apologize, and move forward. I can still believe in myself and in the mission that I am here to accomplish. I can still be proud of myself. I don't have to be beaten down. Those are simply labels that I choose. What are the labels that you are choosing for the tough situations in your life?

Are you choosing to believe in yourself despite the bricks that are being hurled at you? I would challenge you to do so. You are worth it! Pick yourself up after any tough challenge. Dust yourself off. Move forward!

In my book, Leadership Evo, I talk about the four steps that we work through in order to master any skill in life. These four stages take us from being unconsciously unskilled or not knowing that we don't know to unconsciously skilled which is the stage of mastery. Whether we are talking about developing the skills of a leader or the skills of a golfer, the stages remain the same.Stage 1: Unconsciously Unskilled is the point where we might see something as an outside observer but we have not had experience with it to understand the challenges. For example, many people look at leadership and think, "I could do so much better than my boss." This thought is rooted in the idea that leading is easy and that the skills come naturally. We do not move from this stage until we experience the frustration that goes with the actual position.Stage 2: Consciously Unskilled is the point where we experience being a leader and realize that people don't always play nice as followers. We realize that what we thought should be easy is actually fairly or even extremely difficult. This frustration is designed to push us into the development of self in order to overcome the challenges that we are facing. Jean Piaget was one of the first psychologists to evaluate the developmental stages of children as they related to cognitive development. His theories accounted for the idea that development preceded learning. He looked at the manner in which a person would try to correlate existing concepts to a new experience, would then be frustrated that it did not match up which would prompt them to create a new explanatory concepts. By adjusting their belief about a situation, they would be able to move to stage 3.Stage 3: Consciously Skilled is the point in which we have the right understandings and information in place but maintaining the new direction would require deliberate and conscious thought. During this stage, we understand the new skill, new belief, new concept, and we can succeed at implementing this new skill as long as we focus on what is required of us. It is not who we are at this point, but rather it is who we are consciously being. With enough correct repetition of a skill (2500 correct repetitions on average), we can move into stage 4 of learning.Stage 4: Unconsciously Skilled is the point in which we have learned something so completely and practiced it so thoroughly that it seems to become a natural extension of who the person is. For example, when a person is developing the skill of listening, they begin by focusing on the steps over and over and over again. After enough correct repetition, the person gradually does not have to think consciously about the act of listening. It simply begins to become who the person is and the manner in which they listen.

Each of these stages is a jump forward toward the success of the person related to that skill. Think about the skills in your life that you wish to master. By progressing forward in any skill, you continue to expand the possibilities of your success. Every new skill enhances you capacity for success. Every new skill helps you become more of who you have always been capable of being. Go out, get frustrated, learn a new skill, practice and master the skill, and grow your potential!

yMany people believe that leading others is about having the power to dictate what others do. They often think that leadership is about the position one holds or the connections that one has. The simple truth about leadership, however, is that leadership is about winning the minds and hearts of people so that they desire to follow you. The first step in winning the minds and hearts of others is to go out of your way to give before you get. Too many leaders today are looking for what they can get instead of what they can give to others. To give something that has value, is relevant to that person, and improves their lives or well-being is to demonstrate that you care.

Think about a person that you have worked for in the past (or present) who seemed to want to take credit for the work of the team and seemed to want to get without necessarily giving. That person was unlikely to have the loyalty of their team members. They would be unlikely to have their trust either. Now, think about a person that you have worked for that seemed to go out of their way to desire and work for your success, who shared credit with you even when they had done the work. This type of leader is one that others would likely trust, desire to follow, and desire to work with for a very long time. `When people see the good in the leader through their demonstration of values, actions, and results, then they see the logical and emotional reasons to follow that person. Until they see those things, however, their leadership is just a title.

Leaders go out of their way to win over the hearts and minds of the people that they wish to lead. They do not use fear and intimidation as a tactic to persuade. Instead, they use relationship, caring, and a genuine desire to be what their followers need them to be so that everyone is able to succeed together!

Winners operate uncomfortably!If you spend your life inside the comfort zone, you give up all of the beauty that was intended for you. Winners kick down the walls of their comfort zone, jump into the unknown, and live a life that others admire from inside the walls of their own comfort zones. Get to kickin’!--Jody Hollland

"I am just not comfortable asking people for money.""I am not comfortable in front of a group.""I am not comfortable with taking risks in business."

Whatever phrase a person uses to explain why they didn’t take action, you can bet that it actually comes back to whether or not they are willing to operate outside of their comfort zone. In this life, you can either have your excuses in the zone, or your success beyond the zone. Regardless of the excuse one chooses, the lack of success still remains. In order to be successful, you have to learn to act in spite of your desire for comfort.

I can hear myself talking, in my own head about how I don't want to be seen as pushy. I have used that excuse in order to not promote what I do repeatedly. When I realize what I am doing, in sabotaging my own success, I stop myself and reframe the thought. Instead of saying I don't want to be pushy, I ask whether or not I have something of value to offer. If the answer is truly yes, which it is, then I try to imagine how I would feel if someone had the answer to my challenges in business, yet refused to give them to me. Even if they were uncomfortable, I would be angry about them holding back. I would be annoyed if my problems could be solved with new information or training, yet the person who had the answers did not value me enough to share them.

More than anything, when a person is learning to operate outside of their normal comfort zone, they need to be able to see the situation in a new light. Reframing your thoughts allows you to take a different perspective and see how you really can help another person. Varying your perspective puts you in a position to be helpful when you might have been withdrawn, to be of value when you might have been silent. Taking the risk makes the possibility of reward exist. Avoiding the risk simply keeps you away from success even being on the radar. Your life is simply a series of choices. You choose to act or to withdraw. You choose to jump out and do something that might be incredible, or you choose to play it safe. Nobody around you is making that choice. You, and you alone, are making choices for your life. I want to encourage you to find one area that is outside of your comfort zone that you can look at differently today. Find that area and step right into it. Step in and take some action that you would normally not take. Move your life forward! After all, everything that you want is sitting just on the other side of your comfort zone. Go get ‘em!

I haven't played a lot of golf in my life, at least not compared to many of my friends. I have, however, played. About 10 years ago, I purchased a set of clubs that someone had returned to a local store. They were on clearance for under $100 because they did not originate at the store and they did not stock them in the store. I bought the clubs and went to the driving range. I was okay at golf. Mostly, I served as a motivator, encourager, and humorist for the people around I would play with. I wasn't trying to go pro. I simply wanted to play in scrambles with some cool people.

A few times over the years, I have grabbed a club from someone that I was playing with and tried out what "nice clubs" felt like. They felt good and I was able to hit the ball much better. I recently purchased a set of clubs from a friend of mine that used to work at a Country Club. I went to the driving range and took a great player with me. The clubs hit great, but the big difference was in the little tweaks to the way that I hit. I learned some techniques for club grip, stance, and posture. I learned about what the motion should feel like, and how to keep control of myself.

The end result was going from around 100 to 150 yards on a drive to over 250. The amazing part was that with just the right techniques, the entire world of golf has begun to change for me. The same is true of leadership. Many of us are playing with old clubs and without the right coaching and training to know how to get the most out of even those. When we begin to reshape our minds with the right information and inputs, we upgrade our thinking. When we combine great training with great coaching, we begin to upgrade our technique on top of our thinking. That is when the magic happens. That is when our drive for success really begins to take flight.

What is it that you are doing to improve your thinking and your technique? What are you doing to consistently develop the thinking and technique of your teams? If you play with old clubs (thinking) and ineffective technique (leadership tactics), you have to work more than twice as hard to get the same business results. Up your game, or achieve more of the same.

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache, brings with it the seed of an equivalent benefit."--Napoleon Hill

I think that the normal people define failure the wrong way. A normal person would say that when you fail at something, then you aren't any good. Normal people will define failure as a person. They look at people who fail think, that person isn't any good. It isn't normal people, however, that change the world. It isn't people who fit into the neat and tidy definition of society that bring the greatest change. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be normal.

Hill studied more than 20,000 people from all levels of success and failure in life. He had the opportunity to interview Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and hundreds of incredible successes. He also studied thousands of failures. He wanted to create a philosophy of success that anyone could follow. After 20 years of struggling to discover this method of success, by which all of the greats had earned their fortunes, he published the The Law of Success as a multi-volume set. Later, he wrote Think And Grow Rich, which summarized the original works. Hill discovered something very important in all of the successful people that was the opposite in those who failed. People who were successful would use what they learned from failing to make them more successful. People who failed would use their failures to define themselves. This one simple thing, this one simple switch, can change the course of your life.

If you want to be successful, then see failing as a means to learning something new. Allow your failures to be seen only as events to be learned from. Never define yourself by a failure! Every failure truly does hold the seed of an equivalent benefit. Find the seed and seize the opportunities that are revealed only in the event of a failure!

I have often looked at people who have achieved more in this life than I have and thought... What makes them so special? I have wondered what they have or what they know that I don't. In the beginning, I will admit that I was jealous of them and wanted to know how to get what they had. The problem with that kind of thinking, I discovered, is that I cannot have all that was intended for me by taking anything away from anyone else. As I studied more and grew more as a person, I began to learn that what they have is not because they were born different but because they learned to think different.

I kept hearing clues over and over again about learning about miracles. Jim Carrey spoke of "A Course in Miracles." Pam Grout spoke of the course. Jen Sincero spoke of the course. Over and over again the clues kept piling up that lead me to the understanding that I was not missing something in my life. Rather, I had not opened up to something in my life. I had not opened up to the truth that all that I could really want was available now. All that I could really want was there for the asking without the need for anyone else to lose anything, give anything up, or do anything outside of who they were. I didn't need the things of this world. I didn't need the approval of others. I didn't need the world's definition of success. When I thought outside of who I really am and what I was designed for, I grasped at ideas that were not my own. What I needed and what I wanted were one in the same. I wanted to be exactly who I was designed to be without any reservation.

I didn't need or really even want to be someone else. I didn't want to pursue the things that had no value. I didn't want to pursue the things that held only temporary value because temporary value meant that there was really no value. What I wanted was to find peace. What I still want is to find my center and live fully in that centered state. I think that is what everyone really wants. When we diet, we are saying that we are not good enough and must become something or someone else to accept ourselves. When we try to get rich, we are saying that we are not good enough now and must have something else in order to be accepted. Please know that many of the things that we want come when we are able to let go of the pursuit and embrace truth. When we accept ourselves and love ourselves for the creation that we are, we let go of the need to be what we are not. When we live fully into our design, we live in truth. Once we are in truth, we stop overeating because we eat what is needed. Once we are in truth, we stop trying to take anything from anyone else. Once we are in truth, we simply are.

What is permanent is that we were designed for greatness. We were designed to be who we are. We ask way too little when we try to be someone that we are not. We only find true success when we accept who we are and live into that truth. We only find true success when we embrace our greatness and live everyday without fear or reservation, without worry about what others think of us or whether or not we will be judged for being ourselves. We find our greatness when we learn to live without fear for peace and fear cannot exist together. When we are at peace, we are no longer limited because we have chosen what was always intended for us.

I remember back to the 1990's when people were putting stickers on the backs of their vehicles that said, "No Fear." That seemed to be a popular thing at the time to tout that they simply had no fear about anything. They weren't afraid of dying, of living, of taking risks, of doing what they wanted to do, of tornadoes, spiders, or anything else. Although I know for sure that it was not true that people had no fear, it was great to pretend that we were living fearlessly.

Fast forward about 30 years and I look at living a life with no fear quite a bit differently than I did as a teenager. Back then it was about pretending that I wasn't afraid of anything, that I would take whatever risk was necessary. Today, living a life without fear is much more about learning to live above the things that scare me. As professionals, we worry about what our peers will think of us. We worry about how we will be judged if our ideas are not good. We worry about mental and emotional danger as well as physical danger. Come to think of it, those were the same things that we worried about before we were professionals. We worry because we lack the peace that we are seeking.

For me, living with a lack of peace is what it means to live a life of fear. Peace is the inner knowing that everything is going to work out just fine. It is the letting go of needing to control the outcomes of the world or the moment. It is living outside of the past or the future. It is embracing who we are in our entirety without the need to be anything or anyone else other than who we are. Living with no fear is to be. It is to be who you are and to live above the need to be anything or anyone else for anyone else.

As an adult, I am still striving to live with no fear, but for much different reasons. The opposite of peace is fear. To be broken is to live in fear. I choose to be whole. I choose to live in peace. Think about your professional life as well as your personal life. What do you desire? You may never get rid of those voices of doubt in your head. You don't have to. You simply have to learn to live above them.

If the truth is that man was given dominion over all of the earth, and if the truth is that we were created to create, and if the truth is that we were placed here for a purpose, why then do people walk around living inside a constraint that is not necessary? In studying psychology, I have read multiple case studies about people who live inside a world that their mind has constructed that keeps them from functioning in society. This construct is limits their ability to see the world for what it is as well as to understand how to relate to others in the right manner. In reading about people who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, Paranoia, or a host of other disorders as described by the American Psychological Association, it becomes clear that the mind is incredibly powerful. The mind can literally create a prison within reality that keeps you in a place that you do not wish to be. On the other side of that, the mind can also set you free from the prison that was never really there.

When we look upon the world, our beliefs about the world make the world into what it is for us. Our beliefs about reality, about relationships, about the meaning of anything and everything shape reality into what it is for us. To value the world outside of our minds is to value the belief that we established about the world and then generated around us. After all, a madman sees the world from their belief construct and thinks that it is what it should be and what it can only be. Madness is to give up your right to co-create this world. Madness is to place value in the world itself instead of in the beliefs that reside inside of you and create the world that exists for you. I do not choose madness. I choose to embrace my creation as my own.

The world needs to be set free, but it needs to be set free from the constraints that we have created, not from some nebulous force outside of us. The world is what we have created it to be. Our beliefs, housed in our subconscious minds, are incredibly powerful. They are so powerful that what we see is based on a 4 to 1 ratio of creation within the mind to observation outside of the mind. 80% of what we see is created inside of our minds and based on the thoughts that we have had about what we are observing. Only 20% is constructed from outside observation. One theory is that the 20% becomes simply a looking glass of observation. It is a way to validate the initial belief about the what was generated in our minds.

Today, I choose to give up the madness. I choose the give up the idea that I am powerless in this world. I choose the embrace my creation and realize that all that I need in order to be set free is the truth that what exists outside of me is simply a result of what I have created inside of me first. A madman creates chaos. I am not a madman! I create peace. I create joy. I create hope. I create potential. I create that which I desire and I do not blame or seek to blame anyone or anything for that which I create. Today I release the world from my old chains of thought. I choose instead to create the reality that I desire. Today, I create!

We are called to live in the present moment. We are called to seek the truth and overturn the illusions. One cannot fail if they are seeking the truth. It is the truth that allows us to see beyond the restrictions of the world outside of God. When we step back from ourselves, we realize that there has always been a dream inside of us that is the very definition of us. There has always been something that we have always known and never forgotten that brings us life. We were designed to co-create in all that we do. We are designed to live in this present moment, fully embracing who we are and who we have always truly been.

People fail when they design their lives based on what others try to put inside of them, or what others tell them is a "good path" for them. We fail when we are not true to ourselves and our calling. We fail when we miss the mark of truth and live in the illusion of safety, security, or comfort. I am in my own personal hell when I try to be what the world would have me be. I am in my own personal heaven when I walk away from worldly definitions and accept the truth of who I am and who I have always been. I am a creator. I am a here to live into my purpose and my passion. The thoughts that we make are often a reflection of what the world would make, but they are not the truth.

The truth is that you are made of the very breath of God, the very substance that is existence itself. The truth is that connected to all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be. The truth, the connection, is in this present moment. It is not at some point in the future. We fail in this life when we think about "some day" instead of "now." We can only succeed when we are living only in the present moment and only in the truth of our purpose. Should you ever forget that you have a purpose or ever feel that you are inadequate, you are seeking the world's definition instead of the truth.

Truth... all things are one. All things are connected because they are made of the same fundamental energy that created all that exists. When you seek the truth of your connection, you cannot desire ill or harm for others. When you seek the truth of your connection, you seek ways to bring hope, life, and truth to all that you encounter. You cannot fail if you seek the truth. You can only win if you live into the truth of your creation as a co-creator in the world that exists for you. When you know that you were created for greatness, you accept the greatness that was created in you and for you and with you. You accept the truth that success is now! You can only win! You can only succeed! You can only live in victory! You cannot be separated from that which you are created from. You can only live into the truth of your connection.

Today's meditation is... Today, I receive the truth of my creation. I accept the truth of my connection. I embrace the purpose and the passion that I have always known and I choose to live that purpose and that passion now and in every now from this point forward! Today, I accept that I cannot fail if I seek the truth. I seek the truth!

Jody Holland

Jody is a writer, motivational speaker, consultant, and entrepreneur. He has been the keynote speaker at over 250 events around the world. Jody speaks more than 150 times per year at different programs, and he has given more than 10,000 speeches during his career.

Jody has written 16 books and has many more to come.

If you are interested in booking Jody for your conference or event, click the Contact Jody Holland button to contact him.